Screenshot of Dear Kitten YouTube video.
A few years ago, Purina’s Friskies brand joined forces with Buzzfeed to develop a successful marketing campaign called Dear Kitten.
According to its website, BuzzFeed has a broad reach:
- More than 7 billion monthly global content views
- More than 200 million monthly unique visitors to BuzzFeed.com
- Buzzfeed’s YouTube page has more than 10.2 million subscribed viewers
Buzzfeed fans have developed a passion for its content, and they return often in hopes of finding engaging entertaining content.
Released June 5, 2013, the video collaboration features an older housecat teaching the new addition — a cute little kitten — how to be “feline.” It quickly scored as a viral hit, with more than 26 million views to date.
The video cleverly shows all the quirks and silliness of cats, while only having a small visual of the Friskies cat food in the last five seconds of the videos. They focus their attention to what their views want: more cats.
The publication’s newest addition, “Dear Kitten: The Forbidden Water Bowl,” published Jan. 29, 2016, has more than 1.3 million views. To date, 13 videos full of cat-to-cat advice, fluffy cats running about, and Friskies cat food have been created.
The brilliance of this marketing strategy is that these videos have tapped into the gold mine of cats. Internet cat videos have proven to be a power form of entertainment. We have seen the emergence of feline Internet royalty such as Grumpy Cat, Lil bub, and Maru, Master Of Boxes. There have even been cat-video documentaries and festivals.
What can we learn from Dear Kitty?
- Listen to what your audience wants (cats).
- Know your client (cats + cat people).
- If you’re going to make a video, partner with a YouTube giant such as Buzzfeed.